The Pseudo-Clementines are so named because of the claimed authorship of the text by Clement, a successor to Peter as bishop of Rome and believed to be the authentic author of 1 Clement. There are two main renditions: the Klementia (sometimes referred to as the Homilies) a collection of three preliminary writings (the Epistle of Peter to James, the Contestation, and the Letter of Clement to James) followed by 20 books in Greek, and the Recognition (sometimes referred to as the Recognitions) a ten-book narrative, lost in its original Greek but translated into Latin by Rufinus of Aquileia around 406 CE, with supplementation from Homily 20, and documented also in an ancient Syriac translation of about half of the text. The two go back to a common lost source, Jewish-Christian in origin and written in Syria in the early third century, entitled Periodoi Petrou or Circuits of Peter. Besides a particularly ancient Syriac manuscript, dating to 411 and covering Recognition 1–3 and Homilies 10–14/Recognition 7, important are also the fragments of an Armenian translation and three epitomes, two of the Klementia in Greek and one of the Recognition in Arabic. The framework of the original text details Clement’s interactions with Peter along with some details of his own life. In a prefatory letter of the Klementia, Clement informs James that Peter has died and that Clement has been appointed his successor. Attached to the letter is “Clement’s Epitome of the Public Sermons of Peter,” which forms the bulk of the text. As Clement describes the activities and teachings of Peter, he tells also the tale of his family’s separation and reunion—in a manner similar to that of Greek “recognition” novels. Early in the account, Clement becomes interested in Christianity, and joins Peter on his journeys from town-to-town in pursuit of Simon Magus. In Pseudo-Clement, Peter’s encounters with Simon are less miracle contests than wars of words; but, through these disputes we learn much about the beliefs of the Jewish-Christians who composed the text. One section of the text (Recognitions 1.27–71) has been identified as an early Jewish-Christian telling of sacred history from the creation of the world to Jesus written around the end of the second-century; some scholars have associated it with the Ascents of James, a text composed by the Ebionites according to Epiphanius (see his Panarion 30.16.6–9). We also discover some additional details about Simon’s life, including his conception by a virgin, his time spent in Alexandria learning Greek dialectics, his magical accoutrements and abilities, and his association with John the Baptist. Pseudo-Clement’s depiction of Simon bears some alarming similarities to the apostle Paul and doubtless represents early Jewish-Christian antipathy toward the apostle.

Budge, E. A. Wallis, trans. The Contendings of the Apostles Being the Histories of the Lives and Martyrdoms and Deaths of the Twelve Apostles and Evangelists: The Ethiopic Texts Now First Edited from Manuscripts in the British Museum, With an English Translation, vol. 2, The English Translation. London: Henry Frowde, 1901.

Electronic searches for words and phrases may be undertaken for all the Greek parts of the Pseudo-Clementines, including for example the Greek fragments of the Recognition, which are not indexed by “Strecker,” using the text and capabilities of the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae.

__________. “Pagan Sources in the Pseudo-Clementine Novel. ” Pages 265–74 in Religious Identity and the Problem of Historical Foundation. The Foundational Character of Authoritative Sources in the History of Christianity and Judaism. Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series 8. Edited by J. Frishman, W. Otten, and G. Rouwhorst. Leiden: Brill, 2004.

Bartsch, Shadi. Decoding the Ancient Novel: The Reader and the Role of Description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.

Baumgarten, Albert I. “Literary Evidence for Jewish Christianity in the Galilee.” Pages 39–50 in The Galilee in Late Antiquity. Edited by Lee I. Levine. New York and Jerusalem: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1992.

Bautch, Kelly Coblentz. “Obscured by the Scriptures, Revealed by the Prophets: God in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies.” Pages 120–36 in Histories of the Hidden God: Concealment and Revelation in Western Gnostic, Esoteric, and Mystical Traditions. Edited by April D. DeConick and Grant Adamson. Durham: Acumen, 2013.

Boustan, Ra‘anan S. and Annette Yoshiko Reed. “Blood and Atonement in the Pseudo Clementines and The Story of the Ten Martyrs: The Problem of Selectivity in the Study of ‘Judaism’ and ‘Christianity’.” Henoch 30 (2008): 333–64.

Bremmer, Jan N. “Achilles Tatius and Heliodorus in Christian East Syria.” Pages 21–29 in All Those Nations: Cultural Encounters within and with the Near East. Edited by H. L. J. Vanstiphout et al. Groningen: Styx, 1999.

Brown, Scott Kent. James: A Religio-Historical Study of the Relations between Jewish, Gnostic, and Catholic Christianity in the Early Period through an Investigation of the Traditions about James the Lord’s Brother. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1972.

Bussell, F. W. “The Purpose of the World-Process and the Problem of Evil as Explained in the Clementine and Lactantian Writings in a System of Subordinate Dualism.” Pages 133–88 in vol. 4 of Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica: Essays Chiefly in Biblical and Patristic Criticism. Edited by members of the University of Oxford. Oxford: Clarendon, 1896.

________. “East of Antioch: Forces and Structures in the Development of Early Syriac Theology.” Pages 1–27 in idem, East of Antioch: Studies in Early Syriac Christianity. London: Variorum Reprints, 1984.

________. “The Distinctive Sayings of Jesus Shared by Justin and the Pseudo-Clementines.” Pages 200–217 in Forbidden Texts on the Western Frontier: The Christian Apocrypha in North American Perspectives. Edited by T. Burke. Eugene, Or.: Wipf and Stock, 2015.

__________. “From Toland to Baur: Tracks of the History of Research into Jewish Christianity.” Pages 123–36 in The Rediscovery of Jewish Christianity: From Toland to Baur. Edited by F. Stanley Jones. SBLHBS 5. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012.

________. “John the Baptist and His Disciples in the Pseudo-Clementines: A Historical Appraisal.” Pages 317–35 in Rediscovering the Apocryphal Continent: New Perspectives on Early Christian and Late Antique Apocryphal Texts and Traditions. Edited by Pierluigi Piovanelli and Tony Burke. WUNT 349. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015.

__________. “On Recycling Texts and Traditions: The Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Religious Life in Fourth-Century Syria.” Pages 105–12 in The Levant: Crossroads of Late Antiquity. Edited by Ellen Bradshaw Aitken and John M. Fossey. McGill Monographs in Clasical Archaeology and History 22. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

Mingana, Alphonse, ed. and trans. Some Early Judæo-Christian Documents in the John Rylands Library: Syriac Texts. Manchester: University Press, 1917. (A Syriac Life of Clement text is examined pp. 3–20).

________, trans. “A New Document on Clement of Rome, His Relations and His Interview with Simon Peter.” The Expositor, 8th series, 8 (1914): 227–43. (The same text as above).

Morgan, J. R. (1993). “Make-believe and Make Believe: The Fictionality of the Greek Novels.” Pages 175–229 in Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World. Edited by C. Gill and T. R. Wiseman. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993.

Murphy, Francis X. Rufinus of Aquileia (345–411): His Life and Works. The Catholic University of America Studies in Mediaeval History, n.s., 6. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1945.

Pritz, Ray A. Nazarene Jewish Christianity from the End of the New Testament Period until Its Disappearance in the Fourth Century. Studia Post-Biblica 37. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988.

________. “Jewish-Christianity as Counter-history? The Apostolic Past in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History and the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies.” Pages 174–216 in Antiquity in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco-Roman World. Edited by Gregg Gardner and Kevin L. Osterloh. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 123. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008.

________. “‘Jewish Christianity’ after the ‘Parting of the Ways’: Approaches to Historiography and Self-Definition in the Pseudo-Clementines.’” Pages 189–231 in The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. TSAJ 95. Edited by Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003. Repr., Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007.

________. Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (135–425). Translated by H. McKeating. The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Skarsaune, Oskar. “Jewish Believers in Jesus in Antiquity: Some Lessons from a History Project.” Mishkan 42 (2005): 45–56.

________. “On the Problem of Jewish Christianity.” Appendix 1 in Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, by Walter Bauer. Translated by a team from the Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins; edited by Robert A. Kraft and Gerhard Krodel. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971.

__________. “Taufvorstellungen in den Pseudoklementinen.” Pages 1071–114 in Ablution, Initiation, and Baptism: Late Antiquity, Early Judaism, and Early Christianity. Edited by David Hellholm. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011.